Bringing Sales 2.0 to VCs and the Start-Ups They Fund

Bruce Cleveland, a partner at the venture capital firm InterWest, gets it — Sales 2.0, that is. Last week, Bruce invited me to deliver a Sales 2.0 workshop for management team members of the portfolio companies he and his colleague, Doug Pepper, have funded.  Bruce and Doug are representative of forward-thinking VCs who understand that companies focused on improving sales effectiveness and optimization with Sales 2.0 will grow revenues faster at a lower cost, making their investments more valuable.

The workshop participants were CEOs, VPs of sales and VPs of marketing of young companies, some of whom attended the event live and others who participated via phone and Web conference (using Sales 2.0 for a Sales 2.0 event!) The executives’ businesses are varied, but their challenges revolve around common key issues:

• Generating and nurturing sales leads and increasing the pipeline of qualified opportunities
• Identifying which prospects are the most likely to buy
• Expanding the customer base
• Introducing new sales techniques to traditional businesses and their buyers
• Determining best practices for selling through partner channels
• Upselling customers of free or low-cost products

My workshop content included an introduction to the key concepts of Sales 2.0 and illustrated how large and small companies are generating improved, measurable results with Sales 2.0 best practices and technology. My objective was to present proven new sales approaches, tested by our client companies and the best-performing companies we follow, and to give the management-team attendees at least one new idea that could accelerate results or create new opportunities at their companies. To provide multiple perspectives from key thinkers in the Sales 2.0 community, I invited Barry Trailer, co-founder of CSO Insights, and Bill Binch, VP of sales and service for Marketo (an Interwest-funded company), to be co-presenters.

Barry, who describes CSO Insights as “a 2.0 analyst firm,” presented a wealth of data from his recently released survey report on sales effectiveness, gathered from 2,800 companies on 100 metrics across industries.  Among other key metrics, he reported that only 56.3% of sales forces in companies of all sizes are meeting quota, but within the start-up community, the average percentage drops to 50.2%. Clearly there is room for improvement.

Bill offered his expert views on the core Sales 2.0 concepts of sales and marketing alignment and collaboration. Bill asked workshop participants to re-think traditional expectations of sales reps.  For example, he challenged executives who require their sales forces to generate a certain percentage of their own leads, asking, “Who cares who creates sales leads, as long as they turn into revenue?” He  suggested sales and marketing leaders should not be frustrated by sales reps who do not follow up on leads, stressing sales reps should only follow up on qualified leads. Bill also gave participants this excellent tip: To get a good read on how customers experience your company compared to your competitors, go to their website and fill out a form. Then, see what happens next:

• Is an automatically generated e-mail sent?
• If there is an offer, is it fulfilled?
• Do you get a phone-call follow-up within 24 or fewer hours?
• Do you get added to an automated lead-nurturing program?

Then, Bill said, “Once you understand your competitors’ responsiveness, try the same process for your own company, and see how you compare.”

If you work for a start-up company, do your VCs “get” Sales 2.0? Does your management team?

Tags: InterWest, Sales 2.0

What the World Needs Now: How the TED Conference & Sales 2.0 are Similar

I just got back from the incomparable TED (Technology, Education and Design) conference in Long Beach, Calif., exhausted but inspired. At my first TED five years ago,  I ran into Paul Holland, general partner at the VC firm Foundation Capital (and an early Phone Works client at Pure Software, now IBM Rational Software), who described the TED experience simply as “sublime.”  Thanks to Chris Anderson, who runs TED, and his talented staff, anyone can now access the ted.com website, view the unrivaled video content, and get a sense of what the conference is all about.  But describing the experience of attending the TED conference is a bit like explaining Sales 2.0: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

TED is essentially five days of a hundred or so lectures, mostly 18 minutes long, covering “ideas worth spreading”: the latest thinking on topics as diverse as medicine, physics, conservation, renewable energy, film, architecture, games, law, education, technology, art, music and dance.   Speakers this year included Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman; technologist/philanthropist Bill Gates; musical icons Sheryl Crowe, Natalie Merchant and David Byrne; and celebrity chefs Dan Barber and Jamie Oliver. But equally impressive are less well-known presenters who are doing such awe-inspiring things that they bring the audience to its feet or move them to tears. And it’s well-understood that the conference attendees include a wonderful mix of similarly extraordinary innovators, inventors, change agents and optimists who also happen to be mostly CEOs. This makes every meal, break and party an opportunity to share ideas and compare thoughts with like-minded kindred spirits and is the reason why TED is the only conference for which I sacrifice sleep and completely unplug. I just don’t want to miss having a potentially life-changing conversation in order to respond to an e-mail or get to bed at a reasonable hour.

So how exactly is TED like Sales 2.0? Here are some similarities:

1. TED, like Sales 2.0, requires flexibility and openness to new ideas.

2. TED, like Sales 2.0, is interdisciplinary and a combination of art and science, right brain and left brain.

3. TED, like Sales 2.0, encourages collaboration and idea-sharing.

4. TED participants, like Sales 2.0 professionals, seek to improve the status quo rather than settle for the way things are.

5. At TED, and in Sales 2.0, traditional, self-serving sales pitches are not done.

6. At TED, and in Sales 2.0, technology is a key component but not the only one.

7. Both TED and Sales 2.0 take one out of one’s comfort zone.

8. TED’s ideas and Sales 2.0’s improved business results are what the world needs now!

Check out www.ted.com to see what I mean. Notice any other parallels between TED and Sales 2.0? Which TED Talks do you find inspiring?

Tags: Sales 2.0, TED

Inside Sales Managers’ Community: The Telebusiness Alliance

Communities  — and not just the online varieties — seem to be in vogue.  As our world changes, buying and selling practices evolve, and our jobs become harder and more competitive, Sales 2.0 leaders realize they don’t have all the answers — there is a lot to learn by looking outside one’s own company and comparing experiences with others.

The Telebusiness Alliance, a community of inside sales managers, was founded because of my own desire to connect with other managers whose teams sold by phone and Web.   After I started Phone Works after a 10-year, nose-to-the-ground career at Oracle,  I knew that to build a a successful consulting practice providing  trusted advice,  I had a lot to learn about how companies other than Oracle viewed and implemented inside sales.  So 17 years ago, I called six inside sales managers at companies known for their inside sales prowess and invited them to join me for lunch at a local restaurant. I was eager to hear from my peers about their successes and challenges,  how their departments fit into their companies’ overall sales strategies and how they approached key issues such as integrating with marketing and other sales channels, mapping to buying processes, finding good people, motivating them, measuring their performance, and enabling their productivity.

Today the Telebusiness Alliance has grown to almost 200 members in the San Francisco Bay Area, is led by a board of dedicated volunteers and meets every quarter to share industry best practices and provide support and mentoring. The group consists of noncompeting inside sales managers, running both quota-carrying and sales development/lead generating teams, who see value in discussing mutual business issues, both at meetings and online via our LinkedIn group.  Perhaps because we manage inside functions, we especially welcome face-to-face gatherings, and the meetings are well-attended.  Attendees come from the newest start-ups, as well as the who’s who of the valley, and everyone learns from each other.

Inside sales managers aren’t the only ones looking to learn from their peers. Last year, my longtime colleague, Phone Works General Manager Sally Duby, helped form the Silicon Valley VP of Sales Executives Forum to serve the needs of local chief sales officers. Sales operations managers can join their own special interest community, the Sales Operations Forum.

Inside sales managers, you can join our community at the next meeting of the Telebusiness Alliance on February 9 from 8:30 to noon in Redwood City, CA.   We’ll be asking:

• What did you do to change behavior to increase productivity in 2009?
• What are you looking to implement to gain efficiencies in 2010?
• What are the top sales productivity tools you are using today or planning for tomorrow?

Do you have a local community for sharing ideas and best practices? What are the benefits of being part of a community?

Tags: Community, inside sales, Telebusiness Alliance

And the winner of the Sales 2.0 Book is….

Brian Corey!  Congratulations, Brian!

Thanks to everyone who joined Dan Freund, VP and General Manager of OracleDirect, and me on yesterday’s webinar hosted by Jigsaw.  During the web event, I announced that one lucky participant would receive a signed copy of the book.

Besides having some fun with the contest, I hope we met our objectives and delivered helpful information on:

• the outlook for inside sales and its role in the new culture of social selling (Sales 2.0)
• how one SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) company tripled their revenue by assessing and improving their inside sales group
• Oracle’s innovative and leading inside sales groups from inception to >$700 million in North American sales today
• how you can get started with Inside Sales 2.0 initiatives

You’ll soon be able listen to a recording of the webinar or forward it to your manager, employee, friend or colleague; stay tuned for the link. Also, I’ll be answering questions we didn’t get to in my next blog post, so be sure to check back or subscribe by email or RSS feed.

Sales Compensation Trends: How Does Your Package Compare?

Compensation is a critical component of business strategy, and sales incentives are especially important to get right. In his new book, Drive, Daniel Pink professes that most people are motivated by autonomy, mastery and purpose rather than carrots and sticks. When it comes to sales reps, though, I disagree: Most great salespeople I know are still motivated by money. To be credible consultants and to provide the most current advice to our clients, we at Phone Works conduct two compensation surveys each year — one for VPs of sales and one for inside sales professionals at all levels — and we’ve just released the latest results. This year, we are also offering customized versions of the reports, so contact us at Phone Works or leave a comment here to request a quote for specific data relating to your industry, geography, size or type of company, and other criteria.

Is your sales compensation tracking with industry standards?  Are you experimenting with new models such as Pink-style “Motivation 2.0″ compensation in your sales organization? I’d love to hear more about your experiences.

Tags: compensation